Category Archives: life

  • 1107_poverty

    “Me Too”

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    Late last year, I read an amazing article about a pastor who became friends with the notoriously disgraced Ted Haggard. (For those of you who don’t keep up with such things, Ted Haggard was a prominent conservative Evangelical pastor who had been caught hiring a male prostitute to join him at hotels for “massages” and crystal meth.) After his scandal broke, Haggard had gotten counseling and then restarted his ministry. Most of us watching from the outside scoffed at the idea of him as a legitimate minister at that point. But in that article, his reluctant friend described Haggard as “excited that the only people who would talk to him now were the truly broken and hurt”. Think about that. Jesus said, “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” And that’s what those of us who are following in his footsteps are supposed to be doing as well. Prior to his scandal, Haggard was the leader of the National Association of Evangelical Churches. He was a founder of a large church in Colorado Springs. This was a man who was surrounded by and ministering almost entirely to the righteous (or at least the outwardly righteous). It was only after he was disgraced and lost everything that he found himself walking in the steps of Christ serving those who, like himself, were too broken to even hide their sin and sickness.

    Now, I certainly don’t mean to imply that hiring prostitutes and using drugs is a great way to put yourself on the road to serving Christ. But I do think that the story of Ted Haggard has something to teach us. Most Christians want nothing more than to live safe, respectable and prosperous lives. And we are loathe to do anything which would imperil that. To the extent that this allows us to avoid sin, that is fine. But too often, the result is that we are also avoiding becoming the sort of people who can really reach out and serve those who are not righteous but broken.

    Of course, life is not always so kind as to only send you troubles which you have chosen to set yourself up for. Accidents, injuries, sickness, loss and other human beings often intrude on even the most carefully constructed lives. And when they do, the nearly universal response is to ask the basically useless question, “why me?” We feel that somehow life has been unfair to us. We line up all the reasons we don’t deserve our injuries or the scandal of failure as evidence of how unfair life is being to us. But as the saying famously goes, life isn’t about us.

    Ritu Ghatourey has said, “some of the most comforting words that can be heard are me too. That moment when you find out that your struggle is also someone else’s struggle and that you’re not alone fighting that same battle.” One of the things which I have come to suspect as I’ve walked through my own struggles is that so far as there is a reason for the bad things which happen, it may be for just this reason. If I, like Christ, am supposed to be serving and tending to the broken, what can I offer if have never been broken myself?

    If our primary goal is to be comfortable and safe and we eschew following God or life into places where scandal, poverty and suffering may result, we may well find ourselves too comfortable and clueless to help the broken. And how might the knowledge that we are gaining insight, empathy and understanding which will allow us to minister to others in need change our attitudes about our own suffering? If we understand our primary work to be loving, serving and healing ourselves and each other, then no suffering is pointless. No loss is irredeemable. Whatever we are going through, it can be used by God and by us in the ongoing process of redeeming this world.

    After all, this is exactly what God did for us. He became as one of us – he shared in our suffering. He emptied himself and took on our reality as his own. We have a savior who knows what tempts us, what hurts us, what we struggle with and how dark and confusing this life can be. Rather than viewing suffering, scandal and loss as terrible things to be avoided, part of following Jesus and sharing in his suffering may mean doing the same for each other.

  • If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other

    Moving From “Me” to “We”

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    If you are an American Christian, odds are really, really good that at some point you have been told that as you read scripture, you should try inserting your name for the word “you” in parts of scripture where Israel or God’s people are being addressed. So, I could read, “Rebecca shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of her God. No longer will they call Rebecca Deserted, or name her land Desolate. But Rebecca will be called Hephzibah, and her land Beulah; for the LORD will take delight in Rebecca, and her land will be married.” (Isaiah 62:4) It’s not a terrible idea; sometimes we do need help personalizing scriptures and realizing that the love expressed applies to ourselves. Of course, if you do this, eventually you will end up with something like “Rebecca also took her beautiful jewels made of My gold and of My silver, which I had given her, and made for herself male images that she might play the harlot with them.” (Ezekial 16:17) Which is a little too personal maybe.

    Now, if your pastors/teachers are any good at all, they have probably also taught you that in nearly all of the places where God speaks to “you” or even where Paul and Jesus address “you”, unless a specific person is being addressed, the word used indicates a plural you. So it’s more of a “y’all” than “you, Rebecca, sitting over there eating jelly beans.” This ought to be obvious as usually the word “you” is being used to address the nation of Israel or an entire church or the group of people being spoken to. But we Americans are notoriously hyper-individualistic. So with or without a anyone’s encouragement, we do tend to read scripture as if it were speaking to us individuals rather than to a collective group.

    A while back, I became convicted that the hyper-individualistic programming of our culture isn’t compatible with Christianity. I matter as an individual, but I am also part of a larger body. My life is not for me alone, but for the good of God’s Kingdom – a Kingdom which encompasses all of creation. If I see my life and my faith as primarily about me, I am very much mistaken.

    What I came to realize is that countering hyper-individualism isn’t just a matter of prioritizing social justice or even church fellowship. Rather hyper-individualism hides very deep truths about our identities, our purpose and even the meaning of our lives from us. Because the truth is that my life isn’t about “me”. My life and your life and the life of every other human on the planet is about “we”.

    Now, that might sound like some new-agey, mumbo-jumbo, but it’s actually very deeply embedded in scripture. Go back to the very beginning. God made “adam”. That’s adam with a lowercase “a”. It means “man” as in “mankind”. God didn’t make A man. He made humanity. And he called humanity Adam. (The word “adam” is actually used several hundred times in the Old Testament. It really does mean mankind/men/people!) When God was dealing with Adam, he was dealing with humanity.

    Ages ago, my husband pointed out to me that with few exceptions, God judges nations – peoples – rather than individuals. I found this idea offensive, frankly. I should be judged on my own merits, not on what the people around me are doing! But the reality is that a culture and a society are made up of the individuals in it. Unless, I am like Abram and have followed God’s lead to come out from among a sinful people, I am part of the society I live in and will be judged as it is judged. Look at the story of Sodom. God agrees that if there are even 10 righteous men in the city, he will not destroy it. In the end, the city is destroyed because it was beholden to a culture of violence, depravity and inhospitality. Lot clearly is not an innocent (he offers up his virgin daughter’s to a mob, after all!). But he does at least stand up to the forces of the culture around him and for that God allows him and his family to escape destruction. We are responsible not just for personal morality, but for how we handle ourselves in relation to the culture around us.

    Shortly before his death, Jesus prayed over his followers and over us – his followers yet to come. In that prayer Jesus prays repeatedly that we would be one as he and the father are one. We often read this as being about church unity. But it goes much deeper than that. Trinitarian theology teaches that God is both one and three. Over the centuries, a great deal of time, hot air and ink has been spent trying to parse out what that means. But what we know is that in some way God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all one being, despite being three persons – for lack of a better word. When Jesus prays that we will be one as he and the father are one, this is the sense in which he is praying. That we would be both “I” and “we”. Both me, Rebecca and we, humanity, of which Rebecca is one individual. (Of course, theologically speaking, Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit are all of one substance which has its own implications for us – am I of one substance with you and just don’t know it? Many spiritual teachers have claimed just that. Our scriptures are largely silent on this beyond teaching that we retain our identities after death.)

    Or let’s consider it another way. Each of us has the same identity. Each human being was created in the image of God. It is, at the root, who we are. There’s an ancient rabbinical saying which Jesus would have known as well that says, “When Caesar puts his image on a coin, all the coins come out identical. When that One who is beyond rulers puts the Divine Image on a ‘coin,’ all the ‘coins’ come out unique.” Yet for all of our differences, we all have the same identity as image bearers. I recently read somewhere else that every person I meet is another version of me. That’s how deeply we are connected. And that’s what we are missing when we are working out of a hyper-individualistic mindset.

    As I started understanding these realities, I rather purposefully shifted my language to reflect the reality that I am not simply “me”, but am part of a larger “we”. It was an illuminating shift. I found that when I’m thinking in terms of “me” rather than “we”, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. But once I started using we language, I could see that the news was about the way we humans were behaving towards each other rather than about discrete events. Movies are the stories we tell ourselves about who we are or were or could be or wish we were or might have been. Our laws and policies are about the way we organize ourselves, set our priorities and treat each other. If I don’t like the way we are behaving, well, that’s an awful lot like when I don’t like the way I am behaving. If I don’t like the way I am behaving, I need to figure out why I’m doing things I know I shouldn’t be doing and set about fixing and unlearning and relearning. I don’t start a war with myself or engage in daily arguments with myself over it. I figure out what the problem is and make real, practically changes to address them. It works the same when we aren’t behaving the way we should.

    Reverend Terry Hamilton-Poore has said:

    According to the Presbyterian Church’s Book of Order, when a person is baptized, the congregation answers this question: ‘Do you, the members of this congregation, in the name of the whole Church of Christ, undertake the responsibility for the continued Christian nurture of this person, promising to be an example of the new life in Christ and to pray for him or her in this new life?’ We make this promise because we know that no adult belongs to himself or herself, and that no child belongs to his or her parents, but that every person is a child of God. Because of that, every young one is our child, the church’s child to care for. This is not an option. It is a responsibility.

    If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten we belong to each otherThis is how it works – we belong to each other. This has always been true, but this moment in history is probably the first time we’ve been able to see the reality of it so clearly. If I eat chocolate, odds are very good that a child in slavery harvested the beans for it. Another version of me has the life they have because of seemingly innocuous things that I do. My engagement ring probably bought a gun that was used to kill someone. Someone made with the same image as me at their core. I am wearing clothing sewn by a woman in a sweat shop. A woman just like me, only in a different place. And if she were in my place, she’d be wearing a shirt made in a sweat shop too. It’s overwhelming, really to have to face the reality that we human beings can’t do anything without it affecting people a world away who we barely know exist. But if you take that reality and add to it the fact that we all belong to each other, hope appears. The idea that the $100 I was going to spend on a new lamp might actually have been meant for someone else is no longer so strange and incomprehensible. It starts to make sense to me that I was given that excess so I could make sure it got to someone who needs it. We really are all in this together.

    One of the amazing things about learning to think in this way is that rather than my own personal identity disappearing, as those still caught in hyper-individualistic thinking fear is the case, I actually matter more. Who I am is part of a larger whole. If I want the larger whole to be better, then I have to be better. That’s the part that I control. It’s my little piece of the puzzle to work on. And the healthier and more whole I am, the more I am able to tend to others. And as I tend to others, I run into those parts of me which are still broken or immature or neglected. The parts of me which are selfish or prone to dysfunction or scared. And as those are uncovered, I can bring them to God for restoration. Instead of becoming better because I’m supposed to or I want to, I am becoming better so that I can help humanity be better. As we all do it, the world starts to change.

    Despite suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Muhammad Ali sometimes given speeches in support of his social advocacy work. At the start he will hold up one finger and say, “me.” Then he will hold up a fist and say, “we.” Power doesn’t come from the hyper-individualistic me. Power comes from “we”. We are all in this together. We are Adam – mankind. We do belong to each other. And it was Jesus’ fervent prayer that the we would be one as he and the father are one.

  • submission-umbrellas

    Worst Clobber Verse EVER – Christian Patriarchy Edition

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    In a more perfect world, the title of this post would be complete jibberish to all of my lovely readers. But alas, we live in a world which is in the process of being redeemed, so some of you know all too well about Christian Patriarchy and clobber verses. However – joy of joys! – we live in a world which is in the process of being redeemed and I know that some of you have no idea what Christian Patriarchy or clobber verses are. So, for the blissfully uninitiated, allow I to explain a bit.

    At its simplest, Christian Patriarchy is the teaching that there is a God ordained hierarchy in which men are over women and children. A daughter is under her father’s headship until she marries and responsibility for her is transfered to her husband. Ideally in this arrangement, the man is responsible for protecting his wife and daughter from other men as well as providing for her and overseeing her spiritual, moral and personal development. In exchange for this protection and leadership, a female treats her father/husband with respect, obedience and deference. Although this arrangement has been propagated around the world and throughout time irregardless of religion, Christian Patriarchy proponents insist that this is a Christian arrangement rather than just something people have had a tendency to do. Like going to war or practicing dietary restrictions.

    A clobber verse is a verse of scripture which is used to provide definitive proof – in the mind of the person using it – that a particular idea or teaching is true, biblical and theologically unassailable. Now I have a few verses which I will use this way all day, everyday. “God is love” for example. What makes a clobber verse a clobber verse is that inevitably, they are pulled completely out of the context they were spoken into. Nearly always, on closer examination  the verse in question doesn’t even say what the person using it seems to think it is saying. And as a rule, the clobber verse is used to support something which is expressly forbidden by scripture – like oppressing someone, condemning someone or creating division in the body. An example of a classic clobber verse is “I am the way, the truth and the light. No one comes to the father but through me” getting pulled out as proof that only Christians will go to heaven. Even though it doesn’t actually say that at all.

    submission-umbrellasNow, the theological problems with Christian patriarchy are so numerous and obvious that books have been written on the topic. (In fact, if someone wants to give me an advance, I’d be happy to add another one to the genre!) Pretty much every point used to support the idea can easily be unwound to reveal it for the hot mess it actually is. But for today, I just want to focus on the clobber verse that gets used as a foundation for the whole thing. It’s Ephesians 5:23:

    For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

    And we may as well throw 1 Corinthians 11:3 into the mix for good measure:

    Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

    More than any other, these verses get pulled out as incontrovertible proof that it is the job of the husband to protect and lead his wife. Just like Jesus does the church. Except that Jesus offers very, very little protection to his followers. And his leadership of the church is, to put it mildly, not so strong. Now, even among those who aren’t Christian patriarchy types, this idea of Jesus as protector and leader may seem obvious and perhaps I lost you there, but really, let’s look at the evidence.

    I know that many of us have and do pray to Jesus for protection which is fine. But really, we’re talking about a man who repeatedly told his followers to expect to be crucified. And many of them were in the years after his death. If it’s protection you are looking for, Jesus isn’t really your go-to guy. In fact, if you’re really big on safety, Christianity probably isn’t the religion for you anyways.

    There are two times I can think of that Jesus actually expresses a desire to protect anyone. The first was when he lamented over Jerusalem saying:

    “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”

    (For those of you who aren’t up on your barnyard basics – a hen is a FEMALE chicken, btw. Not really a great support for the idea of men as protectors.*)

    And then in his prayer over his disciples in John 17:

    “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me.”

    Which is fine except that the whole prayer is one expressing ideas of equality, mutuality and unity – NOT hierarchy. Jesus protected them so that they would survive to act independently without him, not as a sign of his position above them!

    As for leadership, let’s think for a moment how exactly Jesus leads his church. Did he give his followers a plan to follow once he was gone? Nope. Did he tell them how to pick leaders? Nope. Did he tell them how to dress, how to handle their money, where to preach or leave behind a catechism to follow? Nope, nope, nope and nope. If you’re looking for justification for command and control leadership, Jesus definitely isn’t the role model you are looking for.

    Of course, Jesus did frequently tell people to follow him. And he was recognized as a teacher by his followers. But even in his life, his goal was always that those who followed him would be able to learn and then go out into the world independently. He sent his disciples out to practice preaching and casting out demons on their own, for example. In Luke 6 he says, “a student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” Jesus asked people to follow him so that they could become like him, not so that they could be under him.

    So, there are elements of protection and leadership between Jesus and his church. But to read that a husband is to his wife as Jesus is to his church and come away with the idea that protection and leadership are what a husband ought to orient himself to is absurd. If we want to take this verse seriously, we need to look at what Jesus’ actual relationship with his people is. Jesus variously said that he came to lift oppression, offer freedom, offer rest, challenge, love, rescue, save, comfort, bring salvation. Those verses which say that the husband is to his wife as Jesus is to the church are saying that men ought to do for their wives what Jesus does for his church: offer freedom, rescue them from oppression, offer rest, love, comfort, etc. Like Jesus did with his followers, husbands are to help their wives get to a point of being able to stand on their own two feet and go out into the world as a strong, whole human being (ie unified). The verses which say that the husband is the head of the wife have nothing to do with hierarchy, power, control or roles and responsibilities. In reality, they teach just the opposite of what Christian Patriarchy proponents take from the verse.

    The truth of the matter is that Christian Patriarchy takes a man-made construct which addresses worldly concerns like who is over whom and attempts to use Christianity to justify it. But it doesn’t work. It’s not consistent with Jesus’ teachings or his behavior. The whole thing is nothing more than an illustration of that bible verse that says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 16:25) The idea of men over women has seemed right to humanity for a very long time. And yet, it does lead to death. Despite having been tried for thousands of years and in a myriad of contexts, there has never been a culture in all of human existence where placing men over women as worked to make a peaceful, abundant, just society. All too often it has meant literal death for women at the hands of the men who were supposedly placed over them to protect them. Far from being God’s design for men and women, putting women under men is exactly the sort of thing which husbands are instructed to be rescuing their wives from – just as Christ rescued his people what was oppressing them.

    If you haven’t already, you can read some of my other writing on women and Christianity by clicking this link.

    ****************************************************************************************************************

    *Slightly off topic, but I feel compelled to address the issue of men as protectors a little more. I have had men react very strongly to the ideas I’m explaining here. For some men, being a protector is part of their identity and seen as one of their primary purposes in life. When I have challenged the idea of husband as protector, they felt personally attacked and diminished. So let me be clear: I think that men who view themselves as protectors can be a wonderful, Godly thing. Especially men who feel called and compelled to stand up for those who are too weak to stand up for themselves. I in no way mean to say that this impulse and virtue in men is bad.

    However, a willingness to protect is in no way primarily a male virtue. This is shown in scripture where God describes himself as a protective mother bear or mother eagle. As well as in our everyday lives where women are often fiercely protective of others. In fact, I have known several people who were raised with predatory men and always the mother was judged in the harshest terms for not protecting her children from the abuser. For all our talk about men as protectors, we have strong expectations that women be protectors as well.

    The problem we often run into with men as protectors is two fold. First of all, protection often becomes a justification for restricting the freedom and autonomy of the people being protected. In contrast, the model seen in scripture is primarily protection by driving away threatening forces so that the protected can live freely and unencumbered. Secondly, male protection has a tendency to fixate on physical safety to the exclusion of the daily need to protect hearts, spirits and even emotions from being crushed. As we see in scripture, Jesus wasn’t really concerned with the physical safety of his followers – he promised them death. But he was careful to protect them from the enemy who could destroy their souls.

  • you_are_loved

    Do You Know How to Feel Loved?

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    Pretty regularly my three year old Olivia will tell me, “Michaela loves me.” Or Noah or Dad or whoever in the family she’s just been dealing with. Believe it or not, this doesn’t just happen when someone hands her a piece of candy. Often it’s just after being hugged or read a book or being talked with. Just simple things that seem to make her realize that she is cared for. As a mother, I don’t think I’ve ever heard more reassuring words come out of a child’s mouth than Olivia’s, “everyone loves me.”

    I know people who would probably think it is unseemly to declare oneself loved. We’re supposed to tell other people that we love them, not proclaim ourselves as loved. Even if it’s sweet for a 3 year old to say such a thing, it would seem weird and awkward for us to say it. However, as much as we tell people we love them – and we should! – what a gift to tell people that we have received and experienced the love they have for us as well. I know from experience – and I’d bet most of you do too – that there is little which is more hurtful than a loved one rejecting our love. To be a parent who realizes that as fervently as they have loved their child, that for one reason or another that child doesn’t feel loved. A spouse whose partner feels unloved after they’ve poured themselves out heart and soul for them. Or a friend who prayed over and sat with a dear one only to hear, “no one cares about me.” As wounding as never hearing, “I love you” can be, “I don’t feel loved” can be even worse.

    Sometimes the people around us don’t feel loved because we’re doing it wrong. But I know a lot of people who simply struggle to experience the love directed their way. They may know that their own love for others is true, deep and passionate. Yet they tell themselves that others are just being nice, don’t know any better, or simply saying what they think they are supposed to say when people direct love towards them. I know I’ve done this. It wasn’t until I had my own daughters that it dawned on me that my own mother might actually have meant all of the kind, encouraging things she had said to me over the years. I knew she loved me, but I had rarely allowed that love to actually touch me – to feel it. Even with my own children, I’ve tended not to allow their love to reach me. After all, kids will love even the crappiest mom – it wasn’t personal. Except of course, it is personal to them.

    It took me a good amount of time as well as being on the receiving end of the “your love can’t touch me” phenomena for me to realize that I was doing this. And that’s it’s not OK. I’d like to say that I realized that it’s not right that someone as lovable as me would not feel loved. But really, what finally got through to me was my middle daughter. She’s a sensitive, passionate girl who sometimes reminds me of myself as a child. And she loves me. As a preschooler she would regularly set-up and invite me to “I love mommy” parties with water in her tea set, crackers on napkins and stuffed animals wrapped in blankets as presents for me. For a while I figured this was her way of getting me to play tea party with her. Then one day I looked at her and remembered how fervently I loved my own mother as a child. And it occurred to me that it was wrong for me not to allow for my child’s love to be just as real and intentional as my own had been. Whatever the reasons for not allowing love to touch me were, it was wrong. And I needed to stop.

    Now I very intentionally pay attention to the love which is directed my way. And as I am given a hug or kind words or a gift, I follow Olivia’s example and tell myself, “s/he loves me”. I will myself to actually experience the love being directed at me – to feel rather than simply know it. And more and more I am able to feel the love that comes my way. But in doing this, I’ve found that there’s something very, very deep in me which resists receiving love. I’m sure I could come up with all sorts of ideas as to why – self-protection after being hurt, lack of trust, not feeling lovable, my sister sneezing in my hair that one time when I was three. Who knows? But of all the false ideas and beliefs which I’ve confronted over the years, this one seems particularly deeply embedded. There’s something about allowing myself to feel loved that feels very uncomfortable and dangerous to me.

    Often when my brain is filled with toxic muck as it is sometime wont to be, I will use a mantra to crowd out everything else. I’ll focus so strongly on a particular phrase or prayer that my brain simply can’t get another word in edgewise. Often I’ll use the Jesus prayer. Or if I’m really struggling, I’ll tell myself over and over, “all you have to do is take a breath. And then another. And another.” The other day I woke up from a night of bad dreams to the sound of my dog vomiting up what looked like squirrel hair on my bedroom floor. And somehow I just knew that I needed to focus my brain on one thought: “God loves me.” Over and over for the last couple of days I’ve repeated to myself, “God loves me”, breathing in on the “God” and out on “loves me”.

    It’s been like magic. Within a couple of hours, I felt better than I have in I’m not sure how long. Yet in the quiet moments, when I’ve been able to really pay attention to this mantra, I’ve found myself wrestling with the idea that God loves me. And it’s felt an awful lot like that same struggle I have with allowing myself to feel loved in general. It feels dangerous, I realized, because some of my hurt has become bitterness. Because at times God’s love has felt like a lie. And maybe the truth is that it often feels like I’m serving a demanding God who just takes and takes from me, until I’m completely drained. Just like I often feel with everyone else in my life.

    But it occurs to me that the real problem is that I don’t get to dictate the terms of God’s love – I just have to accept it as it comes. I don’t get to hold out for something more to my liking. To feel loved by God, I need to forgive God and myself and my life for not being what I thought it was supposed to be. I just have to allow myself to ease into what is and enjoy the ride. Because that’s all I have – the right here and now. Where God loves me. And might my struggle to accept love from other people in my life have its roots in the same realities?

    I’m still wrestling with this hard part of myself that doesn’t know how to be loved. Perhaps it’s like loving itself – it’s an ability, not a feeling or even a choice. Something that has to be learned and nurtured. And yet, here comes Olivia telling me, “you love me.” It makes me think that perhaps if we’d focus a little less on convincing each other of our love for them and a little more on offering the gift of letting each other know that we see and receive their love, we’d all be better for it. And if our own love is received, perhaps it won’t be so hard to allow ourselves to receive it from others as well.

  • lovedoesnthurtyou

    “Love isn’t a feeling . . . It’s an ability”

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    One of the things that is both frustrating and fascinating to me is how bad we tend to be at loving. We really think we love people even when we are destroying them. Or we have very loving feelings towards people who experience us as aloof, uninterested and disapproving. We say that another’s happiness means more to us than our own and then make them miserable by trying to impose our preferences and vision for how they should find happiness on them. Just over and over again, we do things which hurt those we purport to love and then get upset with them should they have the nerve to say, “you’re hurting me!”

    lovedoesnthurtyouI came across a post today on the blog “The Registered Runaway” that I want to share with you. We’ve all heard that love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice. But this writer starts with an even better idea: love is an ability. IOW, it’s a skill we have to learn and develop. It seems to me that we are so bad at loving in part because of our old issue of not ever wanting to be wrong. We want to think that we know how to love when we’ve never put in the time and effort it takes to unlearn our mistaken ideas about love and learn how to do it well. So in the interest of education, I’d like to share a few choice excerpts from this lovely blog post “Love is an Ability”:

    Most of the time, an ability is not given, it is grown. You have to feed it and nourish it and work like hell to make sure it thrives through each and every season. Love is no different.

    I am convinced that saying you love someone doesn’t count as love. I am also convinced that willing your mind to love someone that you’ve never reached out and touched, doesn’t add up to much. . .

    You cannot love someone until you know someone and there is a clear-cut difference between knowing of someone and really knowing someone. You can put people on pedestals, but you can’t love them until you know them. You can leave the word love as the lasting residue of your rant, but you don’t love the folks you’re talking about, not really. . .

    Love surrenders its shoulders to runny noses. It holds no pre-requisite for its remedies and it does not ask for that which is inappropriate. It comes without strings and is abundant in grace. It just wants to sit, just wants to listen, just wants to nod and stay until you’ve said all you need to say.

    Love doesn’t dip into your past like a paintbrush to create an idea of who you must be today. Love asks questions and honors how far you have come. Love doesn’t whisper about you- it converses with you. The most unloving words can be said in the name of love . . .

    Love dwells. It doesn’t stop by on its own terms and convenience. Love is born into the dumpster of poverty. It snuggles with the shipwrecked instead of rolling with royalty. It goes off the map into dangerous territory because there’s a woman at a well that needs to know something. Love selflessly dies for those indifferent to its sacrifice. It rises three days later, because it never ever fails.

    Love is engagement. It is entering into polar opposite worlds. . .

    Growing in love is messy and exhausting and tedious. But little by little it gets easier. Our jagged edges get sanded down. After all the stumbling and tumbling and screw-ups along the way, it will become an essential part of how we live. We will experience it in one another without thinking or trying. We will live to love. Truly.

    I would encourage you to head over to read the whole thing . . . and leave a word of encouragement to the anonymous writer.

    I think I’m going to make this a thing around here – exploring what love actually looks and acts like. So we can work on developing our skill at doing it*. Perhaps this is part of the real mystery of the Christian faith – that God would take so much time, demand so much devotion, endure so much grief over us. To deal with and get us to finally admit that we don’t really know how to do this most basic of things – love. So maybe if we can finally admit our lack and learn to not just feel love, but do love and live love, then God who is love will truly be with us.

    *(If you have something you think would be good for this, feel free to email it to me at ratrotter73@yahoo.com)

  • hold earth

    Faith, Doubt and Love

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    There have been a number of times in the last year or two when I’ve very, very seriously contemplated throwing my faith away entirely. Just deciding that there is no God and chalking all my prior spiritual experiences up to indigestion and an over active imagination. Decide that my fixation on religion was really an unhealthy obsession which had come to cause me more anxiety than comfort. That I should free myself from the idea that there’s something bigger going on with my life so I can make better, more practical and more profitable choices about how to live it. Given the silence of God and the way my life has gone, why not just accept that there is no God and we’re just here by happenstance?

    And then there is someone close to me who keeps telling me that he has no doubt that God is real. But he’s also quite certain that God isn’t good. He doesn’t care what happens to us. He’s just as petty and demanding and selfish as the human beings who are supposed to bear the image of God in this world. God made us to be pets, he says. That’s all we are to him – pets created for his own amusement who got out of hand. Now he’s just sick of us. Which isn’t the nicest thought in the world but perhaps it lines up more closely with reality than my high fa-luting ideas about redemption.

    I have this thing I do all the time which helps me figure things out. It’s very simple; I just ask myself, “what if this is true?” So any number of times in the last year or two, I have walked right up to these ideas – that there is no God or that he isn’t good and asked, “what if this is true?” In doing so, I’ve learned something important which has kept me from tossing my faith. It’s that even if there is no God or he isn’t good, I still want to live in a world that is being redeemed through love. If it came down to it, I could let almost everything else I believe go, but not that.

    Christians often speak about bringing our lives into line with God’s will. And then they parse through scripture or try to read the tea leaves during prayer time to figure out what that will is. But what I’ve learned from walking right up to the line of abandoning the idea of a loving God is that the real question isn’t what God’s will is. What really matters is what my will is. If there is a God or if there isn’t a God, I’m still faced with a choice of how to live my life. What to give my heart to. Whether the world will be better for me having been here or not. And if God isn’t good and doesn’t care what happens to us, too bad. I care. I can’t make God exist or not exist or be good or not be good, but I exist and I can be good.

    A lot of Christians believe that there will come a time when Jesus comes back and sets everything right and are just waiting for it. But I decided a while ago that I’m done waiting. I don’t care what God might be waiting for; for my part, I’ve decided that enough’s enough. This world isn’t good enough. Not by a long shot. If God’s not going to come set everything right, then I’ll go right ahead and do what I can to get the ball rolling. If my standards are higher than God’s, then so be it.

    Of course, once we get down to it, I don’t actually believe that my standards are higher than God’s. In fact, I believe that this part of me that isn’t willing to settle for the crap we have going on is a reflection of God. Even more than that, I’ve learned that my real devotion isn’t to some old man in the sky who is benevolently poking and prodding his creation in the direction he wants it to go. My devotion is to love. Which as luck would have it, is actually what my faith teaches me God is anyways. At the end of the day, this is what keeps me from chucking my faith. As long as I am devoted to the idea of a world being redeemed by love, I’m devoted to exactly what Christianity teaches me God is and is about.

    Sometimes people will read things I write and challenge me with the idea that we don’t need God or Christianity or religion for the things I write to be true. We can be good and loving without God. Which is like a fish saying it can swim without water. Whether fish know they are in water or not, that’s what they are swimming through. And whether we know it or not, our goodness and love exist in and through God. It’s something you can be willfully unaware of, but its not something you can escape from anyways.

    And I can talk fiercely about love and a redeemed creation, but I’m one person out of 7 billion. I’m like one skin cell trying to move an entire body out here. But through Christianity, there’s this whole body of people who are seeking the same thing that I am – a world being redeemed through love. So if I can understand what that looks like or how that works and share it with others, then one in 7 billion little me might actually be able to start something. Jesus left behind a couple dozen followers. So we have an example that a small movement, grounded in love of God, neighbor and self can change the world.

    When it’s too hard to go on, when I feel like I’m being ground up into dust, there’s always the cross and the resurrection. Maybe other people can stick it out and suffer greatly to live a life of love all on their own. But I depend on that cross and resurrection. I need to know that even the greatest suffering can be a prelude to joy. Without that, frankly, I would have quit many times over by now. I’d be a bundle of angry, bitter, unforgiving selfishness. I might want to live in a world redeemed by love, but I’d be pretty hard pressed to get myself to actually do my part to make that happen without the assurance offered by that empty grave.

    I suppose if you wanted you could devote yourself to doing your part to create a world redeemed through love without being devoted to Christianity. But the funny thing is that even if somehow we’ve got it all wrong and there is no God or he’s not good, the Christian message and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus still offers the way, the truth and the life of a world which is being redeemed by love. And whatever else I could let go of, I just can’t let go of that.

  • stewie_drinking_1277901098

    Sometimes You’re Just All Jacked Up

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    There’s an episode of the show Family Guy where Stewie, the talking baby, starts drinking so Brian, the family’s talking dog, decides to break him of the bad habit. His plan is to get Stewie so drunk and hungover that he never wants to drink again. So the two head to the local dive bar, The Bearded Oyster. They get soused and at one point as they are about to pound another drink, they are casting about for something to drink to. Stewie says, “Oh – I know, I know . . . to the black man. Thanks for taking it all in stride.”

    My husband and I just laughed and laughed at that. Because it’s so true. Our society has basically expected that no matter how poorly treated, oppressed, disenfranchised or unjustly dealt with a black man is, he’s not allowed to be angry or bitter or just plain jacked up in the head. He’s just got to take it all in stride. No stumbling, no falling, no excuses, no empathy, no mercy.

    The thing is that this “take it all in stride” ethos isn’t limited to black men. It’s a cultural attitude which affects a lot of us. Whatever happens to us, whatever baggage we got burdened with or barriers we faced or the trauma we’ve experienced, none of that is supposed to matter. You’re just supposed to find a way around or through like a trooper. Get a therapist if you need one, but hurry up and get over it. No use crying over spilled milk. Forgive and move on. Take responsibility for your own life. I’ve heard it and I’ve expected it of myself and you probably have to.

    For the most part, it’s not bad advice. I mean you can’t change the past, might as well make the best of it and move forward the best you can, right? The problem is that this generally well meaning advice becomes a sort of moral bludgeoning tool. We stumble and beat ourselves up for it without allowing for the fact that some a-hole had tripped us while another tried to tackle us from behind.

    I recently had someone I know say to me, “you’ve chosen such a hard road to walk” and part of me wanted to hunt them down and stab ‘em in the eye with a sharp stick. Because the reality is that despite my best efforts, I never did get the chance to walk down the road I had meant to take. Like most people, there were a lot of things that happened that I didn’t create or chose which pushed me down the road I took. And no one stepped forward to help make sure I was OK or that I landed on my feet. Except my husband, but he was even more screwed up than me and did his own fair share of tripping me up. I think I did a good job – a freaking fantastic job, really – of making the best of it. But because I’d deeply absorbed the “take it all in stride, never look back, don’t make excuses” ethos, until pretty recently, I couldn’t allow myself enough mercy to actually say, “I got pushed. I got tripped. My way was blocked and no one would help me out.” It was all my responsibility and I rendered harsh judgment on myself for everything that went wrong or I wished was different. And I allowed others to do the same.

    But the reality is that we’re not invincible. Sometimes things happen that are just too major, too hurtful and too big for any human being to just take it all in stride. Sometimes we can’t find a way around. Sometimes we do stutter step. And sometimes we’re just all jacked up in the head. It happens. It happens to the best of us. And you know what? We’re not supposed to have to be invincible. When life is busy tripping and shoving us, we’re gonna stumble. We might even fall. I’m here to tell you tonight that no matter how good or strong or positive you are, life can really fuck you up.

    Of course, when you’re all messed up in the head, you can end up doing really dumb things. And if you’re not really careful, you can hurt a lot of other people along the way. If you can keep your head about you and power through, you can minimize the damage, but often you’ll still find yourself on a less than ideal path with fewer options than you’d otherwise have. But the thing is, whatever gets screwed up and whoever you hurt, you’re going to have to live with all of that no matter what. It doesn’t really do anyone any good to deny that you couldn’t just take it all in stride and really, you shouldn’t have had to.

    There’s a rather infamous verse in Romans 8 which says, “we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God”. It often gets misused as a platitude meant to say that we shouldn’t worry about the bad things that happen because God’s just using it on the way to make something better. Which, frankly, just feeds into our “chin up, take it in stride, don’t let it trip you up” ethos which keeps a lot of us living under a spirit of judgment and guilt. Ages ago I read a book which said it’s not like God is making a cake and whatever craptastic thing that happens is one of the ingredients. Rather, it’s more like he’s making a stained glass window where the dark can be used as an element in the design. You can make a stained glass window without much dark in it. But there are also beautiful windows made mosaic style with a bit of dark material around every piece.

    Which is why I think it’s OK to own and make peace with the fact that sometimes we aren’t OK. Sometimes life makes us stumble and fall and turns our lives into something we never meant for them to be. I don’t think that God necessarily intends us to have to deal with such hard, difficult lives. But if we do, and we let him, he can still make it into something beautiful. Even if we are all jacked up in the head along the way.

  • lovehand

    Love – A Checklist

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    Everyone likes to think that they are good at loving. After all, we have really strong, loving emotions so surely we must be very loving people, right? But here’s a hint: if the person you love doesn’t experience you as loving, you’re doing it wrong. So in order to help y’all out, here’s a handy-dandy checklist based on the famous 1 Corinthians 13 verses:

    Love is patient:

    Do you complain that the object of your affection isn’t improving fast enough? Do you get upset that you have to deal with the same problems over and over? Do you wonder why they haven’t gotten their crap together? Or are you willing to allow them the lifetime God has granted them to become who they were created to be?

    Love is kind:

    Do you assume the best of your loved one? Do you step in to tell them how wonderful they are when they are beating up on themselves – or being beat up on by others? Do you help them write the story of their lives in a way which portrays them in the best light possible?

    Love does not envy:

    Do you think that your loved one has it easier than you do and resent them for it? When things go well for them do you get upset because things aren’t going well for you? Do you think that they are getting the better part of your relationship?

    Love does not boast:

    Is it important to you that your loved one recognize your every accomplishment, good dead and sacrifice? Do you feel the need to regularly remind them of what you do for them and how they benefit from being in a relationship with you?

    Love is not self-seeking:

    Do you have a “what have you done for me lately?” attitude with your loved one? Do you think about the things they could be doing for you, but aren’t?

    Love is not easily angered:

    Are you quick tempered when your loved one screws up? Are you using your anger to pressure your loved one into keeping you happy? Do you frequently take offense at things your loved one says or does?

    Love keeps no record of wrongs:

    Do you sometimes throw past errors or intemperate words in the face of your loved one? Do you feel that your loved one is more often in the wrong than you? Do feel that some past sin or error has created an imbalance between you which they need to make up for?

    Love does not delight in evil:

    When your loved one is upset and hurt, do you feel that they had it coming to them? Do you feel like their pain is a small price to pay for getting your way or making your point?

    Love rejoices in the truth:

    Does a “win” for your loved one feel like a loss for you? Would you rather be right than tend to the needs of your loved ones? When your loved one is riding high, do you feel the need to interject some perspective to bring them back down to reality?

    Love always protects:

    Do treat your loved one’s feelings and sense of self- worth as more valuable than winning an argument or getting your way? Do you step in to re-assure your loved one of their goodness and worth when they have been on the receiving end of failure or harsh criticism?

    Love always hopes:

    Do you believe that the best is yet to come for your loved one? When your loved one tries something new, do you assume that their efforts will succeed? Do you assume that your loved one is growing as a person or do you figure that past failures are indicative of future performance?

    Love always perseveres:

    Are you on the look-out for signs that your relationship isn’t worth it? If your loved one doesn’t respond well to your attempts to connect, encourage or love them, do you tend to say, “screw you” and quit or do you persevere? When there is a conflict, do you demand that the other person make the first move towards reconciliation or do you demand that they admit their error and make the first move?

    The reality is that we humans have an almost infinite capacity for self-justification. If you are so inclined, you can always find a reason for treating those around you in ways which aren’t actually loving. But just because you can find a reason to justify being impatient, unkind, quick tempered, hold a grudge, etc, doesn’t mean it’s ok. Don’t get me wrong – there are abusive people in this work and it is healthy and appropriate for us to set boundaries even in intimate relationships. But if you find yourself giving the wrong answer to more than a couple of these questions, that’s probably a good sign that you need to get serious about not just feeling loving, but actually being loving.

    So, on that happy note – I hope you’ve all had a fantastic, loving Valentines Day. Be good to each other out there! :)

  • jerkaboutit

    Why We Christians Suck at Loving

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    Is there something about Christianity itself which leads to the sort of oppression which its adherents have too often been guilty of? You know – the inquisitions, colonialism, slavery, pretty much every interaction we ever had with First Nations people in the Americas. To name a few. The standard answer for western theologians is that the Christian faith and its teachings are not the problem – people’s sinful natures are. It’s the, “well those aren’t real Christians” blow off. However, South Korean theologian Andrew Sung Park posits a more honest – and more helpful – answer to this thorny issue of the convergence of Christianity and oppression. The problem as Sung Park sees it is that we westerners see Christianity as the answer to the problem of the sinner. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, so Jesus came and died for our sins so we can be forgiven and all that. Our theology, Sung Park argues, elevates the needs and concerns of the sinner over the needs and concerns of the people sinned against. And therein lies the problem.
    This may seem akin to blasphemy for many Christians for whom the problem of sin and sinners is THE message of Christianity. However, compare our sinner-centered approach to Christianity to the words which Jesus actually spoke.When Jesus started his ministry, this was the text he chose:

    “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,to release the oppressed,to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ~ Luke 4:18-19

    Jesus’ most famous sermon – the one which many scholars believe was his “stump speech” – the oratory he gave when he traveled to a new place and crowds gathered to hear him centered on this:

    “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

    “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

    “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.

    “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

    “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

    “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

    “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

    “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

    “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” ~ Matthew 5:3-12

    When Jesus spoke of the day of judgment, it wasn’t sinners who he focused on:

    “I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’

    “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? ‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’

    “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’” ~ Matthew 25:35-40

    Do you see the difference? Certainly, the forgiveness of sins matters. But Jesus’ life and teaching centered on the poor, the blind, the imprisoned, the mourning, the meek, the oppressed, the needy – not on the sinner. He spent far more time speaking of the need to forgive than about the need to seek forgiveness. I think Sung Park is correct in saying that we have erred in putting the sinner and not the weak, the oppressed and the suffering at the center of our faith.

    We see this distortion of our faith very strongly in American Christianity. We are very concerned both as a culture and within our churches with holding people accountable, morality, taking responsibility and upholding standards – all sinner focused activities. But we are far less concerned with lifting our fellow man’s burdens, offering solace to the suffering, refuge to the lost, freedom to the prisoner or liberation to the oppressed. In fact, when we do speak of the suffering, the lost, the prisoner and the oppressed, we use the language of accountability, morality and responsibility instead of the biblical language of solace, easing of burdens, refuge, freedom and liberation. We go so far as to tell people that those things will come through an embrace of accountability, morality and responsibility. But we have it backwards. The problem of the sinner is solved when the needs of the sinned against are met – not the other way around.

    The church is supposed to be a hospital where the sick go to be made well. But when the sinner and not the weak, weary, burdened and suffering are at the center of your theology, the church becomes at best a half-way house where people go to stay out of trouble and at worst a reform school where the way-ward are whipped into shape. And even worse than what it does to the church, is what it does to the way we relate to one another.

    I have known people who have mastered being responsible, who are active in their churches, volunteer in their community and haven’t broken any of the ten commandments in decades who have displayed breath taking cruelty to those near to them when they were weak, suffering and in need. And God-forbid that they had actually screwed up, fallen in the gutter or broken the rules. These supposedly good, Christian people wouldn’t piss on their fallen near and dear if they caught fire in front of them in a desert. Inevitably, their cruelty was justified in the name of demanding accountability, forcing responsibility and upholding morality. And often, the name of love (sometimes tough love) was given to what was nothing more than rank cruelty. When the problems of the sinner are your hammer, the weak, suffering, lost and dying look like nails sticking up out of the wood.

    What is particularly insidious about this distortion of our theology is that not only does it not solve the problem of sin; it creates and perpetuates it. It’s exceedingly rare to find someone raised with kindness, gentleness and tenderness who was cruel to those near to them like this. Back when I did prison ministry, I never met an imprisoned kid who hadn’t been egregiously abused. Hell, on pretty much every episode of Intervention, the addict suffered some trauma prior to starting their downward spiral. Sin creates damage to those who are sinned against. To stop the sinner, you must heal the damaged – they are usually one and the same. Offering forgiveness to the sinner lets them know that they are welcome in the hospital, but if you then stick them in the half-way house or the reform school and tell them to man-up, the cycle of sin will likely just continue from generation to generation.

    The truth is that it is a cruelty to give a starving man fishing lessons. It’s hard to learn anything with an aching, empty belly. Feed the starving man and when he is ready, he can learn to fish and teach his children to as well so that they won’t have to suffer as he did.

    Proverbs 16:25 says “there is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” Our sinner-centered theology seems right to us. A good number of people have achieved great success by sticking with the tenets of the half-way house or reform school. Or hope to one day. And a great many think that others would also be successful if they’d just get their crap together. But look around – people are suffering. Half of children in America are being born into broken homes. In certain income brackets, more marriages end in divorce than not. There’s a picture going around the internet of a little boy in African laying flat on the ground to drink from a muddy puddle with the caption “so you want a new iPhone 5?” The selling of poor children into slavery is commonplace in some parts of the world. If they are little girls, their slavery is often sexual slavery and it happens before they’ve even gone through puberty. Our way isn’t working. It seems right to us, but keeps leading to death. Even if it’s worked for you – we can’t wait for everyone else to catch up.

    Last night I found my 8 year old awake long after her bedtime. When I asked her if something was wrong, she told me, “I just keep thinking about the kids in my class who are mean to me who I have to give a valentine to even though I don’t like them.” I talked for a while with her about Jesus’ teachings about loving and doing good to our enemies and God’s perfect love. At the end of the conversation she asked me, “how come we have one way that we think we should do things but God always has a different answer that’s better? It’s like we can think of one thing to do and God has thousands of other ways of doing things that you’d never think of.” I told her it was because God made the game – he knows how it’s supposed to work.

    And that’s the deal – God knows how it works. And when he was here walking among us, sinners were a part of a much larger whole. The needs of the sinned against took center stage. I think the time has come for us to repent of having made sinners the center of the faith and set to work repairing the damage created by this error. For that to happen, we make Jesus’ priorities our priorities and his concerns our concerns. To do that we must stop trying to get everyone to act right and simply tend to one another:

    If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

    Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle. . .

    Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality. Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

    Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”

    Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good. ~ Romans 12: 6-10, 13-21

  • black faces 1224_s31

    Stuff I Appreciate About Black Folks

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    Hey – want to watch me stick a fork in an electric outlet? ‘Cuz that’s pretty much the same thing as being a white person who talks about black folks, right? Or at least some would have you think so. But I’m going to do it, because African Americans are forever getting dumped on in our society and are rarely called out for all the things that are great about them.

    Now, before I get started, allow me to provide proper cover for myself. For those not in the know, I’m married to a black man. I have 5 mixed race kids and two African American stepsons. So if nothing else, my “I have black friends” creds are actually solid. (I’ve written more about my experience with race here and you can learn more about my $.99 ebook on race in American here.) Of course, there is as much variety among black folks as among any other group of people. I’ve known sweet, shy, reserved black women and loud, sassy, confrontational black women. Macho black men and nerdy black men. And the things I’m going to list here aren’t universal. There are always people who go against the grain. But as a general rule, these are things which I have observed to be common among black folk I have known that are not nearly as prevalent among the white folks I have known.

    Of course, every positive trait has a dark side when pushed to far. My goal isn’t to idealize African Americans, but like I said, we continually dump on black folks and discuss problems in the black community. For this post, I’m just focusing on things which I personally appreciate about black folks I have known. So having properly covered my ass, here goes:

    1. They respond to your problems with grace and understanding.

    Probably because black folks have had to deal with so many really serious, awful problems for so long, they aren’t particularly phased by your problems. Usually they’ve heard or seen it all before – and worse. And if your life is going to hell because you did something wrong, well, the black folks I’ve known probably disapprove of your dumb choices as much as anyone else. But they also know that you’re the one who is going to have to live with the consequences of your dumb choices, so there’s really no point in piling on. Better to help you move forward than waste time berating you much less exacerbate the problem by turning you out. In my experience, if your life goes all to shit, you’re much better off going to your black friends or a black church for support than to your average middle class white person or church.

    2. They tend to be more tolerant and less put off by people’s quirks and oddities.

    It could just be the particular black folks and the particular white folks I’ve known, but I’ve found that black folks seem to be more willing to just accept people as they are without feeling the need to express disapproval or pressure others to change. “That’s just the way he/she is” is a very common sentiment. Not only that, but I’ve seen a real willingness to not simply tolerate, but enjoy people’s oddities and quirks. To laugh without being mean or even be challenged by people’s differences. To understand that sometimes negative traits are the very things which also produce positive abilities (“stubborn’s just the other side of determination”).

    3. They’re often quick to offer praise and encouragement.

    I guess when your chances to shine have been limited by society and the culture at large is only willing to reflect negative messages back at you, you have a greater appreciation for the value of building people up. The world hands black folks enough criticism and critique, so it seems that a lot of black folks have chosen to respond by doing just the opposite and focusing on the positive they see.

    4. Black folks have a willingness to be open and real.

    I have white friends who I have known for years who have almost certainly had terrible things happen to them but would never share them. But most of the black friends I’ve had, once they’ve sized you up and decided that you’re good people, are open books. Which means it’s OK for me to be an open book as well. I don’t have to worry that I’ll share something which leaves me thinking I’ve revealed too much or which is so shocking that it makes the other person uncomfortable (see #1).

    5. Good instincts.

    I was raised, like a lot of white women, not to trust myself. I was taught to discount things that made me uncomfortable as probably making too much of nothing and to think that other people could probably see me better than I could see myself. The black folks I’ve known don’t do that. Instead, they have learned to rely on instincts to stay safe in a hostile and capricious world. And having practiced using their instincts to size up people and situations from childhood up, they tend to have really good instincts. My husband’s family is more than a little bit crazy, but if they tell me that someone is good people or that a person is no good, I trust them.

    6. Comfortable with sexuality.

    Vilifying black sexuality has practically been an American pastime for several centuries now, but this is actually something I really appreciate about the black folks I’ve known. Pretty much every white person I’ve known has joked that their parents had sex exactly once for each child they had. I don’t know any black person who harbored (or even wanted to harbor) any such delusions about their parents. People have sex. Old people, ugly people, fat people, poor people, nice people, mean people, smelly people. It’s just part of life and something we all do. And while I was caught completely off-guard the time my sister in law asked me if I thought my husband was sexy and stammered like an idiot in response, I think that this frank acceptance of sex is a healthy, positive thing.

    7. Creativity with words.

    My husband and the friends he grew up with would do something they called “playing the dozens” which was basically an insult competition with each person engaging in spontaneous wordplay to come up with the most biting and creative insults possible. Which may not be the kindest pastime ever invented, but creating good insults is its own art form. Doing it regularly will teach you to use words creatively far better than any writing course ever could. As a writer myself, I particularly like and enjoy words. And black folks habitually find ways to use language creatively and often unexpectedly. I get comments fairly often on my writing style and part of that comes out of having spent time with African Americans and having absorbed some of the idioms and patterns of speech which I’ve heard there. Plus, my degree is in literature, so I am semi-qualified to declare that the very best literature of the 20th century was written by African Americans.

    8. A spiritualized view of life.

    Black folks are a bit notorious for their tendency to embrace superstition and conspiracy theories. But the other side of this is that many black folks understand their lives and the world in spiritual terms which really resonate with me as a spiritual person. They are more open to recognizing the ways that the Spirit works and moves. Making choices for reasons which aren’t entirely rational, but are spiritually driven is something which is accepted and respected. Whether it’s man-made or God driven or demoniacally empowered, there’s more to life than what’s apparent on the surface and most black folks seem to know and respect that.

    9. The economy of black folks tends to line up fairly closely with God’s economy.

    I’m not so much talking about economy in terms of money here. Rather, I mean the economy of what is valuable, desirable, worthy, etc. God’s economy is rather upside down. The first are last, the last are first. You give up your life to gain it. When you are poor, you are blessed. Rejoice in suffering. Those of us who enjoy living in a system which was created largely by and for us can often avoid being last, losing our lives, being poor and suffering excessively. But African Americans have never had that luxury. Which I think means that they have been in a better position to embrace God’s economy. To accept the upside down nature of God’s ways more deeply than people who can avoid being last if they want to can. They know that being last, being poor, having your life taken from you and suffering don’t necessarily mean that you’re failing at life. And it’s certainly not the final word.

    10. Black folks are usually quite good at understanding how other people are going to perceive them.

    I am terrible at this. I cannot tell you how often I have been caught completely off guard by someone who responds to me in a way that I didn’t anticipate. I’m really good at putting myself into someone else’s shoes right up until it comes to anticipating how they are going to experience dealing with me. Then I’m clueless. I make an observation that I think is neutral or even positive and it gets taken as an insult. I’ll think I’m being nice and trigger the other person’s every insecurity. On the other hand, my husband and most of the other black folks I know are quite aware of and tuned into how other people are going to experience and respond to them. I’m sure it comes from moving around in an often hostile environment and the often heavy price black folks pay for getting it wrong. I sometimes get irritated with my husband for saying it, but as a white person I’ve been able to walk through life being pretty clueless. But the flip side is that my husband is an absolute master at navigating social interactions in a way that I will never be. Some of that’s personality, but some of it really is the difference between being white and black in this country.

    So, there’s my list of stuff I appreciate about black folks. I’m sure I could think of more items to add if I thought about it, but I think this is a pretty good start. Hopefully I haven’t inadvertently insulted anyone.

    Now, I’m not simply sharing these things here to give my white person stamp of approval to beleaguered black folks. Rather, actively seeking, noticing and valuing the gifts which people different from myself bring is part of my job as a functioning part of the body of Christ. It’s no secret that the body of Christ is shockingly divided by race. Scriptures describe the church as a body. Too often, we read that as applying to our own particular congregation and our giftings. As if each one was its own body, having within it all it needs. But really, the body is much bigger than that. And it does have many parts. It has different nationalities and races and classes which make up those parts. As such, learning to integrate the church is going mean learning to appreciate the particular gifts and strengths that these various and differing parts bring with them.

    Too often, we want to homogenize the body – find a way to make black folks more like white folks and Asian Christians more like American Christians. But really what we ought to be doing is looking out for what other parts of the body have to offer that we’re lacking. What bit of truth they have a more solid grasp of than we do. What they know and understand that we’ve been blind to. We need to be actively looking for these things and expecting to find valuable gifts that God has brought forth among all different sorts of people. So take my little list as a starting point.

    But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” . . . So that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. ~ 1 Corinthians 12:18-21, 25-26